In fiction, transhumans - those with nanotechnologies in their brains - faced discrimination, oppression, and other atrocities. In real life, I was consumed by articles and videos related to human rights issues on race, sexual orientation, and gender identification. These were interesting times to be reading a global, political, science fiction thriller, as fiction and real life seemed to be running in parallel. I read the first two books many months ago, but I was reading Apex recently as people boycotted Target for their transgender-friendly bathrooms, and Donald Trump’s destructive rhetoric rose to power, and Hillary Clinton was absolved by the FBI of her email scandal, and the Orlando night club was shot up, and Alton Sterling was killed, and Philando Castile was killed, and eleven Dallas police officers were shot, leaving five dead. On the other hand, my brain could be hacked and used to control my body to do something terrible. On the one hand, communicating telepathically with my mom, who’s had a stroke and is no longer verbal, sounds fantastic. We’ll connect your prosthetic arm to nodes in your brain so you can make it move just by thinking about it.Īs you might suspect, there is conflict over whether this is a good thing or a bad thing.

Then imagine the ability to build software on top of that technology - an app store for your brain, if you will. The story is built around nanotechnology and the ability to connect our brains with computers. Ramez Naam at Ignite Seattle, 2008 Photo by Randy Stewart. I got the same vibe from author Ramez Naam when I read his three-book series, Nexus, Crux, and Apex, set in the year 2040. He sees the beginning of things and understands the likelihood of where it’ll end up - like that season in 2005 when heâ€™d go to geek gatherings in Seattle with a video camera and say, “Have you heard of this thing called YouTube? I think it might be important.” (A chain of events that eventually lead him to help the first ever Ignite Seattle turn into a worldwide movement). Until Death Do Us Part (and to the Death it will be) (83)Ī friend once declared that my husband, Bryan, is from the future.Throwback Thursday: 2010 & The Trouble With Relaxing.Friday Link Love: Distress Signals, Current Protest Culture, and a New Podcast for West Wing Fans.Throwback Thursday and The Epidemic of Hard Working Women.

Nexus trilogy by ramez naam